Author(s): Rodrigo Hasbun

Novel | Fiction Reductions | Translated fiction | Historical | Bolivia

Winner of an English PEN Award 'He is not a good writer, thank goodness. He is a great one' Jonathan Safran Foer

A gripping novel about an unusual family's breakdown, set in 1950s-60s South America Loosely based on real events, Affections tells the story of the eccentric, fascinating Ertl family, headed by the egocentric and extraordinary Hans, once Leni Riefenstahl's famous cameraman and Rommel's 'personal photographer'. Having fled Germany shortly after the country's defeat in the war, the family now lives in Bolivia. However, shortly after their arrival Hans - an enthusiastic adventurer and mountaineer - decides to embark on an expedition in search of Paititi, a legendary Inca city. The failure of their outlandish quest into the depths of the Amazon rainforest proves fateful, initiating the end of a family whose subsequent voyage of discovery ends up eroding everything which once held it together. Against the backdrop of the both optimistic and violent 1950s and 1960s, Affections traces the Ertls' inevitable breakdown through the various erratic trajectories of each family member - from Hans and his constant engagement in colossal projects, to his daughter Monika, heir to his adventurous spirit, who joins the Bolivian Marxist guerrillas and becomes known as 'Che Guevara's avenger' - and the story of a woman in search of herself, the story of the heartrending relationship between a father and a daughter, the story of a family adrift. 'Hasbun's writing has a strange power. He likes to reach into the darkest places. Reading him is like...a journey to the brink of an abyss' El Pais

Review: 

A Bolivian novelist explores the inner lives of a real exiled Nazi and his Marxist assassin daughter... intriguing Financial Times

In Affections, a family elegy is woven into an epitaph for the radical politics of South America and the result is an act of literary hypnosis you won't soon forget.  -  Adam Haslett

Affections is charged by a bright kaleidoscope of perspectives, the voices of exiles, a post-war German family in Bolivia. The father's past, a centrifugal pulse, propels the outward direction of Hasbun's dark, stunning novel. Hasbun has spun a tale of displacement, of political turmoil, in which the characters' motives are as complicated as the Bolivian jungle they explore. The reader's journey through this novel, like its characters', feels both actual and impossible. It's a fascinating book. - Lynne Tillman